


The Garden

by PoH



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Minor Rinoa Heartilly/Squall Leonhart, Minor Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife, Pre-Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:47:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23796364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoH/pseuds/PoH
Summary: Axel gets sent by the Organization to perform recon duty in the ruins of Hollow Bastion.  And that was pretty much the last thing he wanted to do.
Relationships: Aerith/Lea (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	The Garden

**Author's Note:**

> ...I end up putting this note at the beginning of a lot of fics, but for those who have never played Final Fantasy VI, the heroine of that game is Terra Branford. That's the Terra who is mentioned in this story, NOT the Terra from Birth by Sleep. (They should really give her a cameo in the Kingdom Hearts series already, so I don't have to keep adding this disclaimer, lol.)

“Man, I really do get stuck with the icky jobs.”

Axel stood amid the ruins of the town where he’d grown up. In his hands, he held the card with his mission on it- as if anyone besides Demyx actually needed their assignments written out for them. _Perform recon in Hollow Bastion. Take note of any signs of life apart from Maleficent. You are permitted to destroy any Heartless that attempt to attack you._ “Oh, how generous of you.” Axel rolled his eyes. “Recon. On a dead world. What a joke.”

There weren’t many Heartless around that he could see, which made sense to Axel. Why would the Heartless want to stick around in a place with no hearts to consume? They would have moved on to another source. He stretched his arms over his head and then put in a few practice throws with his chakrams. They collided with the one remaining wall of the store where he used to get sea-salt ice cream with his friends.

Axel took his time moving through town. _Funny_ , he thought, _Nothing to see here, and somehow I still know exactly where I am._ There were clues if one knew where to look for them. The pale, purple tiles still embedded in the ground and the exposed pipes indicated that he’d arrived in the Fountain District. One three-tiered fountain still remained, though the top had broken off. Axel craned his neck back. Was that the one that they used to hide behind and splash people with? It had to be. He remembered that it stood across the street from Rinoa’s favorite pet store, and there was the shop’s wooden sign lying nearby.

He kept walking, through an empty town square that used to hold a farmer’s market every weekend, past the stretch of wall where he and his friends used to sit and mess around. Why had Xemnas sent him to investigate this world, of all places? Was it some kind of sick joke, or a reminder that he didn’t have a home anymore and everything he knew was gone? “Like I even needed the reminder,” Axel muttered.

Somehow, he ended up in front of a building that he hadn’t intended to go near. It was one of the few places that had already been in ruins before the Heartless came: a small, broken-down chapel with a missing roof. Axel noticed a Soldier Heartless creep through the entrance. He sighed. Might as well go inside, now that he was here. It wasn’t like the sight of the place could hurt him, not without a heart to feel any sadness.

Inside, a garden had been thriving among the stone pews and broken pillars. Or, at least, it should have been there. Since the last time Axel entered the chapel, the weeds had grown all over the place and choked most of the flowers. The survivors were about to be trampled into the ground by the collection of Soldier Heartless currently scavenging the chapel for hearts.

Axel snapped his fingers, setting the Soldier Heartless on fire. They scuttled around in a panic and crashed into each other, causing some of the flames to land on the weeds and the flowers. Axel grimaced. So much for protecting her garden. He put the flames out with another snap of his fingers and resorted to destroying the Heartless with his chakrams. Luckily, the few remaining flowers were still alive and intact. “Sorry, Aers,” he muttered.

He could just imagine Aerith standing in front of him with her hands on her hips. “ _Fire? You tried using fire to protect my garden? Seriously, Lea?"_

“I _said_ I was sorry!”

“ _You do that again and you’re never allowed back in here. Got. That. Memorized?”_

Axel chuckled. She’d fallen in love with the chapel when they first discovered it as kids and worked so hard to protect the small cluster of flowers that she’d found in the middle of it all. Soon she had turned the place into a beautiful garden, and she kept coming back to take care of it every day. And for what? There was hardly anything left.

He walked through the pews to the spot at the far end of the chapel in front of the altar, the place where it all started. That first cluster of yellow flowers still held on and survived. But they wouldn’t last much longer if the weeds and the stray Heartless had anything to say about it. Just like everything else in Hollow Bastion.

Without really stopping to consider it, Axel knelt down in the dirt and started pulling up the weeds, one by one. Many of them did not want to come out. But that just felt like a challenge, and Axel never liked to back down when someone challenged him. They were coming out of the ground whether they liked it or not.

The weeds grew everywhere. This should have been a job for all of his old friends, not just him. Isa had always been willing to help Aerith with her garden when she asked, though he would never volunteer on his own. And Isa actually did the work. Axel- back when he still called himself “Lea”- preferred to stretch out on one of the pews and watch. Aerith would flick dirt at him until he finally agreed to help everyone.

He stopped pulling weeds for a moment and took another look around. By now, Cloud would have stepped on something and gotten kicked out by Aerith. Tifa would be trying to convince Aerith to let him back inside. Squall would be working alongside Rinoa, and she’d be telling whatever stupid jokes came into her head, just to see if she could make him laugh. Terra Branford would be sitting in her own corner, braiding the weeds into flower crowns and necklaces, and chatting about whatever kid she was babysitting for that week. Lightning would be hauling things back and forth. Prishe would be sitting atop the ruined altar eating all of the snacks that she’d brought with her.

Where were they all now? Probably dead, with a few exceptions. The Organization knew about Squall and Aerith because of their connection to the Keyblade Master. But Axel wasn’t in the mood to reveal himself to old friends. Not in his current state.

Axel got back to work. One of the weeds refused to come out of the ground. Sweat ran down the back of his neck as he tugged and tugged at it. He was just about to set it on fire and call it a day when it finally came out. A gaping hole lay in the weed’s place. And Axel noticed something white sticking out of the dirt.

It turned out to be a sheet of paper. Axel brushed the dirt away until he could see the words written there. The handwriting looked very familiar. He’d seen it so many times when they passed notes to each other in class; how could he not recognize it?

_Lea,_

_Two weeks. You and Isa have been gone for two weeks. It feels so much longer than that. I don’t know what to do. Maybe I am being stupid, but I keep going back to Ansem’s castle. I know you guys used to like to sneak around there, so I keep thinking that must be the place where someone saw you before you disappeared._

(The word “disappeared” was jagged and uneven compared to the rest of Aerith’s handwriting.)

_Sometimes I feel like crying and sometimes I feel so mad at you that I could scream. People keep disappearing, and I’ve been scared that one of us would be next, but you kept saying that everything was going to be fine. And now you’re gone._

_And I know it’s not your fault. I know there’s a reason why you and Isa haven’t come back and it’s not because you don’t want to. I just don’t know what to do. I wish I knew what to do. Where are you? Why is everyone disappearing? How do I make it stop?_

_I just keep coming back here and working on the garden because it’s the only thing that makes sense to me. At least here, I can take care of something and keep it safe. I can stop something from dying._

_Please, please come home. I miss you so much._

_Got it-_

_I can’t even write it out. It hurts too much every time I try._

_\- Aers_

Axel crumpled up the letter and put it back in the hole where the weed had been growing. He half-considered burning it, but couldn’t quite bring himself to do it.

There were still so many weeds to pull out. Axel didn’t know why he kept doing it. There was just something so satisfying about ripping the stuff out of the ground and throwing it aside. He left so many jagged marks in the ground where they used to be and only partially shifted the dirt to cover them up.

As he worked, he found more letters buried in the ground where the flowers used to grow. Not all of them were addressed to him. Some were written to Aerith’s parents, who died when she was too young to remember them properly. Several were written to Cloud, and a few were written to Isa. He left those in the ground. Saïx wouldn’t care to see them now. At least a dozen letters were addressed to Terra, her best friend since kindergarten. All people who had disappeared from her life at one point or other.

But most of them were written to him.

_Lea,_

_Terra’s gone. It’s only been a day, so I’m hoping and praying that it’s a misunderstanding and she’ll turn up somewhere. I can’t lose my best friend too. I can’t. But she’s gone, just like you._

_I don’t know what happened. She was babysitting for that little girl, Kairi. You know, the one that she always said was her favorite? They went out to pick flowers or something and Kairi’s grandmother said that they never came back. Who would go after a little girl and her babysitter? What is going on? What’s happening to Radiant Garden?_

_I’m losing my mind. I need you all to come back. Especially you. You owe me a sea-salt ice cream bar and a whole afternoon helping me with my garden for this one. That’s what you get for scaring me like this._

_\- Aers_

Axel snorted. “Looks like I only owe you the sea-salt ice cream bar now. I’m not doing this again.”

He found another one just a few inches away.

_Cloud’s gone too. Tifa’s a complete mess. I have to pretend like it doesn’t bother me as much, so she doesn’t feel like she has to make me feel better too. So much for that stupid bet we all made, huh? He’s never going to find out about her crush on him, and they’re never going on a date now._

_No, I can’t write this kind of stuff. But this is the only place where I can let it all out. I’m trying so hard to be strong for everybody, and then I come here and I fall apart. And I wish so bad that I could say all of this to you in person instead of writing it down. I want you to tell me one of your jokes and make me laugh, no matter how dumb of a joke it is. The dumber, the better._

_Squall, Lightning, and Prishe are tearing the castle apart looking for Cloud. The other guards-in-training are helping them. But the actual guards aren’t doing much of anything. And Ansem and his apprentices keep telling them to focus on more important things. Like anything’s more important than your friend going missing._

_You’d better come home soon. I miss you._

_\- Aers_

Axel pulled out the last of the weeds from underneath one of the pews. By now, the sunset covered the chapel in a soft, red light. But he could still see how much cleaner the whole place looked. 

Except, with the weeds gone, there was nothing growing in its place. Just a lot of bare dirt, and that small cluster of flowers in front of the altar. And Aerith wasn’t there to plant more seeds. Maybe he’d saved those few flowers that were left, but the rest of the place would stay barren and dead, just like the rest of Hollow Bastion.

He made sure that the letters were back in the dirt where Aerith had buried them. He had no desire to look at them ever again- or anything else in the chapel. 

After gathering up the last of the uprooted weeds, Axel turned his back on the place and left it behind for good. He tossed the remaining weeds into a pile that he’d already made in the street outside and set them on fire. The flames curled around the stems and leaves and turned them all into ashes. But the pile was far enough away from the chapel that it wouldn’t damage anything still inside.

“Can’t wait to tell the boss what a colossal waste of time _this_ mission was,” he muttered out loud.

* * *

Many weeks later, another person entered the chapel.

“Tifa!” Aerith gasped. “Tifa, come look!”

“Oh no, what’s wrong?” asked Tifa, as she stepped through the archway. “Are your flowers all dead?”

“No- that’s just it. I mean, there’s not much here, but I expected it to be a lot worse than it looks.” Aerith walked through the pews and knelt down in front of the patch of yellow lilies that still remained. “It’s been nine years since any of us came in here. I figured this place would be nothing but weeds. But there’s plenty of room here to plant new seeds.” She grinned and pulled some packets out of the bag that she’d slung over her shoulder. “Good thing I brought some from Traverse Town.”

Tifa smiled too and crouched down to join her in the dirt. “Yeah, I’ll help you plant them. We’ll get this garden back in no time!”

“Hollow Bastion won’t know what hit it!” said Aerith. They both laughed. She took another look around the chapel. It really was strange how clean and barren it looked. And what happened to the rest of her flowers if no weeds had killed them off? She supposed that the Heartless must have destroyed them all. Still, with everything cleared out, that meant that half of the work she’d expected to do had already been done for her.

“Okay, where do you think we should start?” asked Tifa.

Aerith got back on her feet and brushed some of the dirt off her dress. “Go find Leon, Yuffie, and Cloud, and tell them to come help us. We’re bringing this place back to life.”


End file.
